What is a wallet?

A crypto wallet does not hold coins. It holds keys: secret numbers that let you prove a payment on a shared record belongs to you, and spend it. Once that idea clicks, the rest of this track follows from it.

The coins live on the blockchain

A blockchain is a shared record of every payment, copied on many computers around the world. Nobody owns the master copy; every copy is checked against the same rules.

Your coins are entries in that record. Your wallet is the program that keeps the keys which prove some of those entries are yours.

text

            The blockchain (copied on many computers)
  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  payment … payment … PAYMENT TO YOU … payment …      │
  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                              ▲
                              │ "this one is mine, and I can spend it"
                              │
                     ┌────────┴────────┐
                     │   Your wallet   │
                     │   holds KEYS    │
                     └─────────────────┘

This is why you can lose your phone and still have your coins: they were never on the phone. What you must not lose is the keys.

Public address and private keys

A wallet has two kinds of thing: what you share and what you keep.

Your address is what you give people so they can pay you. It is safe to share, like a bank account number on an invoice.
Your private keys are what let you see and spend what arrives. Anyone who has them controls the funds.

Monero splits the private side into two keys, which matters later in this track:

Item	What it lets someone do	Share it?
Address	Send you a payment	Yes
Private view key	See every payment that arrives, and its amount	Only with care; it is a privacy key
Private spend key	Spend your funds	Never
Seed phrase	Rebuild everything above, on any device	Never

A Monero main address is a long string of letters and digits. On the real network it starts with 4. You can also make extra addresses, called subaddresses, one for each person who pays you. They all belong to the same wallet, and payers cannot tell that two of them are linked.

The seed phrase: the master backup

Keys are long numbers that nobody can copy by hand reliably. So wallets write the secret as a list of ordinary words: the seed phrase (or seed). Every key and every address of the wallet is worked out from it.

text

   SEED PHRASE  (16 or 25 words)
        │
        ├──► private spend key ──► spend
        ├──► private view key  ──► see incoming payments
        └──► main address and every subaddress ──► receive

Kilonova offers two seed formats:

Format	Words	Good to know
Polyseed, 16 words	16	Shorter, and records when the wallet was made, so a restore scans less
Classic, 25 words	25	Works with every Monero wallet, including the official one

A worked example: Meena writes her 16 words on paper. Her phone is stolen. On a new laptop she installs Kilonova, chooses Restore wallet, types the 16 words, and the same addresses and the same balance appear. Nothing was copied from the old phone; everything came from the words.

The same works for anyone else who finds the words.

DANGER

Anyone who has your seed phrase can take every coin in the wallet, from any device, without your password. Nobody can undo that. Write the seed on paper, keep it offline, and never photograph it, type it into a website, or send it in a chat or email.

Custodial and self-custody

There are two ways to "have" crypto:

	Custodial	Self-custody
Who holds the keys	A company, such as an exchange	You
What you hold	An account with a username and password	The keys, through your seed
Forgot your password	The company can reset it	Nobody can reset anything
The company is hacked, closes or freezes your account	Your funds may be affected	Not affected
You lose your seed	Not your problem	The funds are gone

Kilonova is a self-custody wallet. It runs on your device, Dhiva Labs never sees your keys, and there is no account. That gives you full control, and full responsibility.

Why there is no "forgot password"

Kilonova asks you for a password when you create a wallet. That password does one job: it encrypts the wallet file on this device, so someone who picks up your phone cannot open it.

text

   Seed phrase ──────────────► works on ANY device, forever
                                (this is the real backup)

   Wallet password ──────────► unlocks the wallet file on THIS device only
                                (cannot be reset by anyone)

There is no server holding a copy, so there is nobody to ask for a reset. What each loss means:

You lose	You still have	Result
The password	The seed	Restore from the seed on any device and set a new password
The device	The seed	Restore from the seed on a new device
The seed	The device and password	Open the wallet and write the seed down again at once (in Kilonova: Wallet options, Show seed)
The seed and the password	Nothing that works	The funds cannot be recovered by anyone

Stay safe

Treat the seed like the funds themselves. Paper, offline, out of sight.
Your address is public; your keys and seed are not. Nobody legitimate ever needs your seed.
No support team, app or website can "recover" a self-custody wallet. Anyone who offers to, in exchange for your seed, is stealing it.
Learn on a test network first, with a wallet you create only for practice. Lesson 4 shows how.

In Kilonova

Create a wallet and write down its seed: Beginner guide.
Rebuild a wallet from its seed: Restore a wallet.
See the seed and keys of a wallet: Show seed and Show keys in Manage several wallets.